Gazans need not be bullied by an Egyptian army they admire

An Arabic-language commentator describes a nightmare scene where the Egyptian army invades Gaza. Other topics: chemical weapons and Sudan

“I fear that, some day soon, I might turn on the TV to shocking live images of Egyptian warplanes raiding targets in the Gaza Strip, amid the noise of ambulance sirens as dozens of casualties are rushed to the few hospitals of the Strip, which have been kept medicine-deprived under the strangling Israeli siege,” wrote Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of the recently launched news website, Rai Al Youm, in a column on Thursday.

“I am honestly not looking forward to witnessing anything like this happen … because I want the image of the Egyptian army to remain pristine in my mind; the image of an army that fought all the Arab wars with dignity and courage,” he added.

Dark prospects, however, have started to emerge recently with statements from some Egyptian army officials who have been using excessive rhetoric when talking about the security threat that the Gaza Strip has come to represent for Egypt, the author said.

Last week, speaking to the Kuwaiti newspaper, Al Rai, Maj Gen Ahmed Wasfi, the Second Army Commander of the Egyptian army, threatened to invade the Gaza Strip, using “a language that we used to only hear from Israeli officials”, Atwan wrote.

Gen Wasfi said the following: “I say to those jihadist elements in the Gaza Strip that we will not allow you to repeat your criminal acts in Sinai again, and we will cut off any head that tries to threaten Egypt’s peace and security,” Atwan quoted him as saying.

The Egyptian army “initiates aggression against no one … but if anyone tries to lay their hand on our country, we will know how to straighten them out good,” the official reportedly said.

Egypt has every right to defend itself against whatever threat, the author noted. But how big is this Gaza threat anyway? Note that, in its months-long crackdown on jihadist groups in Sinai, the Egyptian army has not arrested a single Palestinian, the author argued.

“I don’t really understand the scope of the threat that a food-deprived Gaza Strip really poses to Egypt or its gigantic army, which is equipped with super-modern US-made weapons and warplanes,” observed Atwan, who was born in a camp in Gaza and spent his childhood there. “In fact, forget the army, just the number of staff at the Egyptian central security apparatus would easily outnumber all the residents of the Gaza Strip.”

The Egyptian army is a regional superpower that could occupy the Gaza Strip “in five minutes” and there would be no one to fire a single bullet in resistance, Atwan went on, “because Gazans see the Egyptian army as their own army, and see Egypt as their own mother and the Egyptian people as their own siblings.”

End of an era for Arab chemical deterrents

Over the past decade, two Arab countries have been made to give up their chemical weapons, and a third one is on the way, which marks a paradigm shift in the history of the Arab world, wrote Saleh Al Manea, a political-science professor at King Saud University, in a column yesterday in the Abu Dhabi-based newspaper Al Ittihad.

The chemical disarmament of Iraq, Libya and, eventually, Syria has “deep strategic implications” on the ability of these Arab countries to keep their power of deterrence in a region where they are either too close to, or are antagonised by, Israel, the region’s sole nuclear power, Al Manea suggested in his article.

But, unlike other nations that build these weapons to stave off foreign aggression, Iraq and Syria have unfortunately used them to crush internal insurrections, he wrote.

While the international community still tolerates limited-scope, conventional warfare between states, it has shown recently – in the Syrian case, for instance – that it can no longer accept the use of non-conventional weapons against unarmed people.

“As chemical weapons lose their deterring power, Arab armies must start thinking about military and non-military alternatives to maintain some form of deterrence,” he said, adding that the most useful of these are non-military options like cultural and economic diplomacy.

Regime obstinacy can spell chaos for Sudan

The Sudanese government’s refusal to make concessions in the face of popular discontent – which has so far led to violent clashes with the authorities, leaving dozens of protesters killed – is pushing the country to the brink of the unknown, said an editorial yesterday in the Sharjah-based newspaper Al Khaleej.

Clashes erupted in Sudan last month when the central government decided to stop subsidising fuel and other basic commodities to curb its budget deficit.

“The Sudanese government’s obduracy is not in its best interest, nor is it in the best interests of the people of Sudan, because it simply means that the crisis will continue to fester, threatening to take a turn towards uncharted territories,” the newspaper commented.

The Sudanese people have suffered for decades from poverty, lack of opportunity and high unemployment rates, not to mention security and political crises, the paper said, suggesting that the last thing the Sundanese people needed was price hikes.

Now, if the decision-makers in Khartoum, the capital, do not work quickly to remedy the situation and stop denying the dire conditions in which millions of Sudanese are living, they will soon find themselves incapable of keeping control of the country.

Digest compiled by Achraf El Bahi